HOW I KNEW IT WAS TIME TO LEAVE MY THERAPIST
Ending your working relationship with a therapist can feel tricky to navigate, and it’s even harder when it’s a therapist you really click with. In December, I made the difficult decision to end my relationship with my therapist of the last two years because, while she was on maternity leave, I started working with a temporary therapist who turned out to have a different skillset that I’ve really benefitted from as my goals in therapy are shifting—and I’m trying to spend less time intellectualizing my feelings. I genuinely believe in prioritizing growth rather than staying with a practitioner simply because I like them.
I have been in and out of therapy since I was 11 years old, so I’ve worked with many different therapists. It started off with working through panic attacks and anxiety that had destabilized my life. By the time I was 25, I realized I really needed help navigating romantic relationships and how I was experiencing them. The last 10 years feel like I’ve been able to chip away and untangle the many layers of conditioning that have colored how I see myself, my outlook on relationships, and how I show up in relationships.
The last two years have felt like the most significant in this journey, thanks to my incredible therapist and my ex-boyfriend.
A good therapist wants you to eventually not need them. A good therapist will acknowledge when they can’t help you with your specific needs. A good therapist will support you in finding a better fit.
Two weeks ago, we had our wrap-up session, which is pretty customary when you’re winding down with a therapist. You can take as many sessions as you need, but I only needed one. I really appreciated that my therapist came prepared with a few “highs” and “lows” from our time together.
While I wouldn’t have ever been able to point to a “low” in our work together, I deeply admired that my therapist shared with me that she felt she wasn’t able to fully equip me with the tools to navigate my emetophobia. I don’t talk/write about this much because it’s very uncomfortable for me. I’ve had this crippling fear of throwing up for more than half my life, and as I’ve gotten older, it’s intensifying, which has resulted in me developing some OCD behaviors. At some point, I would like to dive more into this topic, but it still feels a bit too unnerving. My therapist acknowledged that talk therapy isn’t the most effective approach for me in this area, given my physical reactions when discussing it. So a major goal with my new therapist is to address it through brainspotting.
My therapist and I both saw eye to eye on the “high” of our working relationship, though. In the last two and a half years, I’ve learned what secure attachment really means—not just in a romantic context, but with myself. There is nothing more satisfying to me than hearing my therapist say, “you worked so fucking hard at this.” It’s been ten years in the making.
I didn’t even know what attachment styles were until I was about 30. After learning about them, I thought the knowledge alone would help me course-correct—but it didn’t. With more awareness, I started to feel my anxious attachment more intensely. For so many years, I desperately wanted to change this about myself. It took a while until I realized that it wasn’t necessarily something to change as much as it was something that I needed to accept about myself. I couldn’t just wish it away or intellectualize it. I had to find that security within myself that I was consistently searching for in someone else.
Learning how to self-regulate was perhaps the most important piece to all of this. Even my therapist said that any orientation of therapy or healing work comes down to self-regulation. I can’t stress enough how much that has changed everything for me. I started practicing it very intentionally around 2021/2022. Much like meditation, though, it really took a while for me to feel the impact and get used to just sitting with my uncomfortable feelings. Then, through my relationship in 2023 and the breakup in 2024, I really got to put those skills to use and realized—it fucking works. It’s not a perfect cure. It doesn’t take the pain away. I just trusted that I could take care of myself, and that younger part of me, in a way that I never really had before.
My therapist really held me through my first committed relationship. She taught me how to do a needs inventory, based on the eight core relational needs that are essential for secure attachment: security, validation, acceptance, mutuality, self-definiton, impact, initiative, and expressions of love. We talked talked about schemas, and how the brain processes information (in my case around romantic relationships), in order to prepare for future outcomes—but it doesn’t allow for possibility, growth or change. A lot of time was spent on balancing my own needs with the needs within my relationship.
And as much as there’s been a part of my brain obsessed with wanting to be “chosen”—something I talked about a lot with my therapist—she said to me, “Well, now you know what it’s like to be chosen, because you chose yourself.” I’d never thought about it that way before. Of course, wanting to be chosen by a romantic partner is valid—but it shouldn’t come at the expense of who we are or our needs. I didn’t grow up with a model for what a normal, healthy relationship looks like, so I’ve had to figure it out for myself. I spent much of my twenties self-abandoning, with very little trust in myself. Knowing now that self-abandonment is no longer an option for me feels like reaching the top of the mountain on this journey.
I know the saying “people never change” gets thrown around a lot, but I hope I am a testament—and that this newsletter is too, given how much I’ve worked through in real time—that people can change. Most importantly, your attachment style is not a life sentence if you’re willing to do the hard work. You just have to truly want it for yourself and be willing to go against what feels comfortable. Yes, in the beginning, all this healing work was motivated by wanting to be “better,” so I could be “chosen.” But knowing that I have chosen myself —and feeling the peace that has come with that—is really the best reward.
If you’re looking for resources to find a new therapist, you can check my guide here to finding or breaking up with a therapist: